Commander Clash S2 Episode 2: Basandra, Oloro, Riku, Zedruu
Hello and welcome to Commander Clash, a video series where several MTGGoldfish contributors battle in a four player Commander game for fun and bragging rights. For this week, we're not following any deckbuilding theme but instead are bringing whatever crazy brew we feel like playing. Here's what we've got:
- Seth plays the most "Seth Deck" possible: a durdly Control deck with a commander who doesn't even need to be cast to get value: Oloro, Ageless Ascetic
- Richard takes the role of aggressor and whips everyone's creatures into a frenzy with Basandra, Battle Seraph
- Tom lets his opponents decide how his deck will work in a unique "Choose Your Own Adventure" deck with Riku of Two Reflections
- Tomer's deck is shrouded in mystery; as Richard put it, "What's the point of Tomer's deck? He's just going to durdle around and kill us with a combo." Yes, hopefully, with Zedruu the Greathearted
We've brought some truly absurd deck lists for this "Anything Goes" week! Which jank brew will end up winning? Let's find out! But first, a quick reminder: if you like Commander Clash and other video content here on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel to keep up with the latest and greatest.
Seth's Deck (Oloro)
Richard's Deck (Basandra)
Tom's Deck (Riku)
Tomer's Deck (Zedruu)
Post-Game Thoughts
I got my deck from this awesome primer and then tweaked it to suit my own tastes. The entire deck revolves around casting and abusing Enduring Ideal. It has a bunch of win conditions, such as:
- Form of the Dragon + Second Chance + Paradox Haze + Mistveil Plains = Form of the Dragon drops your life total to 5, which lets you sacrifice Second Chance to take an extra turn on your first upkeep. You tuck Second Chance back into your library with Mistveil Plains, then on your second upkeep with Paradox Haze you get it back with Enduring Ideal. Take infinite turns and deal infinite damage.
- Sacred Mesa or other token generators + Pyrohemia + Vicious Shadows = Make tokens, kill them with Pyrohemia, and ping your opponents to death with Vicious Shadows.
- Starfield of Nyx + a ton of enchantments = turn your enchantments into creatures and beat face.
- Azor's Elocutors = lock down the board with cards like Solitary Confinement and Dovescape, eventually win with fillibuster tokens!
The deck is hilarious and has many janky ways to win. The only thing I didn't like is the lockdown pieces, specifically Dovescape, which strays too far into the "feelbad" territory for my taste. The deck can function without them, but then you're leaving yourself vulnerable to having your janky 4+ card combos getting disrupted easily.
I'm a big fan of Tom's "Choose Your Own Adventure" deck. I love political cards and Tom's deck is full of them. Guided Passage is one of my favorite cards in the format. They look awful, but they end up working much better in practice: even the "meh" looking Steam Augury turns into an instant-speed draw five for only four mana when you can convince someone to team up with you. Also the steal/copy cards like Telemin Performance are great ways to have your deck auto-adjust to your table's power level: you'll get high-power creatures at high-powered tables, and weaker creatures at low-power tables. It also keeps the deck fresh because you're always getting different things from it. Two thumbs up!
Next Week: Time Spiral!
We're picking commanders from one of my favorite Magic sets, Time Spiral. The entire block messes around with fundamental concepts of the game and took a lot of bold risks—tons of new mechanics, funky cards, new ways to look at the color pie, and almost included the first planeswalker cards (they didn't make it in, but showed up in the next set, Lorwyn)—which laid the foundation for future sets. It's no surprise that the legendary creatures available from that set are unique and very interesting to build around! Tune in next week to see what we come up with!
As always, we encourage you to leave us a comment on this article, on YouTube, or on Twitter @BudgetCommander. Your feedback is greatly appreciated, be it thoughts on the game, ideas on how to improve the series, or suggestions for future themes; we read all of them and bring them up in discussions. Thanks for watching!